Tennessee teen sues Christian school for withholding diploma after she posted about her girlfriend

Tennessee Christian Preparatory School told Morgan Armstrong she violated their Social Media Policy. The facts say otherwise.

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This month should have been a celebration for Morgan Armstrong. The high school senior and star basketball player was set to graduate when administrators at her school told her family they needed to have a meeting.

Morgan Armstrong (via Facebook)

Turns out they had seen a public post on Morgan’s Facebook page highlighting her same-sex relationship. She posted it shortly after turning 18.

They had also seen a private message posted for her Snapchat friends asking them to “like” her post because she had a lot of Trump-supporting acquaintances. That message, which one student must have leaked to school officials, said: “Go like and comment on my post guys bc if no one on my socials knew i was gay then they sure as hell do now so this is a big thing tbh, also i’m kinda scared about the facebook comments bc i have some ruthless trump supporting ‘jesus’ mfs on there.”

You know what she meant by that. There are a lot of conservative Christian bigots who might respond to her post by telling her she’s some kind of sinner who needs Jesus. Not all Christians are bigots, obviously, but the Trump-supporting ones? Gotta watch out for them.

I know what she was saying. You know what she was saying. But why did the school give a damn what she was saying?

Simple: Morgan attended Tennessee Christian Preparatory School, one of those schools where “homosexual behavior” is not allowed. But that’s not why she was in trouble, apparently. According to the adults at the school, the problem was acknowledging the open cruelty of Trump supporters. They said she violated their Social Media Policy by disparaging those bigots.

Armstrong and her father said they met with principal Kylie Machacek and head of schools Jared Tilley.

Armstrong said the school presented the family with a letter, referring to the post and the private message that they had obtained. That letter read, “Morgan posted on social media platforms, such as Instagram, a disparaging remark, reflecting the people at Tennessee Christian. The comment reflected on the institution, facility, staff, alumni and students in the most negative possible way.”

If you read a post calling out conservative Christian bigots and your first response is, “How dare she talk about US like that?”… then you’re the problem.

She didn’t mention the school, or any of her teachers, or any of her classmates, in any of those posts. She correctly pointed out there were assholes out there—there are!—and the school overreacted by assuming she was talking about them.

The school’s policy says students cannot post anything that’s “threatening, harassing, illegal, obscene, defamatory, slanderous, harassing, bullying, or hostile towards any individual or entity.” But she wasn’t “defamatory” or “slanderous” or even “hostile” regarding what bigots do; she described them accurately. So what’s the big deal?

In any case, because of their overreaction, the school officials banned Morgan from attending graduation as well as any athletic banquet. They also told her they’d mail her diploma in a month because they refused to give it to her on stage.

Then they threatened to sabotage her future:

Morgan will not comment about the school or people associated with the school. If online slander continues, records of posts and messages will be forwarded to colleges and universities as part of a comprehensive student file.

Again, she never slandered the school or anyone in it. But if she continued, the school insisted, she wouldn’t get her diploma at all.

Her parents, who are both openly in support of their daughter here, couldn’t believe it:

“I was shocked and then I went to anger,” said Monica Armstrong, Morgan’s mother.

I want to reiterate that the school didn’t comment on her relationship—even though, deep down, you just know that’s what this was all about. They focused on her (honest) admission that conservative bigots wouldn’t like it… which they took as a personal insult for some reason. Now, because of that interpretation, they were threatening to punish her with whatever leverage they still had.

While private Christian schools have every right to set their own ridiculous policies, the expectation is that they’re at least going to honor what both sides agreed to in writing. And that’s where the problem lies here. Even if you believe Morgan violated the school’s rules, the school’s handbook says a first-time violation for breaking their Social Media Policy is, at worst, a one-day in-school suspension. Not banning someone from attending her own graduation and refusing to hand over the diploma she earned.

By going from 0 to 60 at the first sign of pushback, the school was ignoring its own stated rules.

That’s why Morgan’s family has now filed a lawsuit against the Christian school. They say the letter she received “falsely” states she was insulting people at the school.

Nothing in Morgan’s public post was vulgar, disrespectful, or slanderous, and the post does not refer to the Defendant in any respect.

They said the same thing about her private request—she wasn’t talking about the school or the people in it—adding that she was referring to bigots in her extended family, not good kind Christians. (And surely the folks at Tennessee Christian Preparatory School are good kind Christians, right?)

Instead, Morgan’s statement describing “some ruthless trump supporting ‘jesus’ mfs” referred to members of Morgan’s own family with whom she was connected on social media—people who, in Morgan’s view, profess but do not practice Christian principles of love, acceptance, and compassion.

This section, in my mind, is what everything boils down to:

52. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that Morgan actually violated the Defendant’s Social Media Policy (she did not) and was not disciplined pretextually for being gay (she was), because Morgan had never before been disciplined for violating the Defendant’s Social Media Policy, the maximum consequence that the Defendant could permissibly impose for a first-time Social Media Policy violation was “minor”—a “1 day in-school suspension.”

53. Nevertheless, in its haste to suspend Morgan for being gay, the Defendant violated its own Disciplinary Policy and summarily imposed a “Long-term suspension (more than 10 days)” instead.

54. As a result, Morgan was forbidden from attending school from that point forward, and she was not permitted to take final exams.

You have to wonder what the school thought it would accomplish by punishing one of its best students for something so harmless. Instead of giving her the sendoff she deserved, they ruined what should have been highlights of her high school experience.

The lawsuit ends with a request that, if the school loses the case, they remove the suspension from her record, allow her to take her final exams, give her the damn diploma, stop threatening her college prospects, and pay any associated legal costs. (The school said she didn’t have to take the final exams, and they wouldn’t hold it against her grade-wise, but if she scores well on them, it could improve her grade point average. That’s why she really wants a chance to show what she can do.)

While the school hasn’t formally responded to the lawsuit—they say they have not yet been served with it—they issued a press release on Thursday “firmly [rejecting] the misleading allegations outlined in a recent lawsuit supposedly filed against the school.”

The irony in all this is that Morgan wasn’t talking about the school when she posted her message, but by punishing her for nothing, the administrators confirmed what critics of Christian schools often say: These institutions are hotbeds of bigotry. They have no love for LGBTQ students. They pressure students to suppress their emotions. They make a big deal over nothing while ignoring much more serious problems.

It’s mind-boggling that any private school would rather withhold a student’s diploma for expressing genuine concern about the inevitable reactions to her relationship than just let it slide because no reasonable person would actually give a damn.

The silver lining to all this is that there’s been an overwhelmingly positive response on behalf of Morgan. News outlets are covering the story and any neutral explanation of what happened makes the school look absolutely horrible. But they brought this upon themselves. That’s the price you pay when bigotry is your biggest selling point.

Meanwhile, Morgan’s family held a small protest/celebration on the day she was supposed to be graduating with her classmates:

A graduation celebration for Morgan Armstrong (screenshot via WSMV)

Yesterday, I had a chance to chat with Morgan about everything she’s going through, and I learned a lot more about her situation than a lot of the media coverage has revealed.

For example, the biggest question I had was why she ended up going to a conservative Christian school in the first place. If she and her parents are relatively progressive on LGBTQ issues, what drew them there? That answer was extremely straightforward: The school offered Morgan a spot on their basketball team back in middle school along with a partial scholarship to go with it, and her family decided that was an offer they couldn’t turn down. While they are Christian, they didn’t see their values as clashing with the school’s idea of religion… until now. When it comes to how she feels about Christianity today, Morgan told me, “this situation definitely didn’t help.”

I also wondered why she decided to post the pictures now instead of just waiting a month or two until she’s finally done with school. Morgan said she did that on purpose. She’s known for years now that she’s attracted to other girls, and she’s also known her school disapproves of that, and “I didn’t want that fear to hold me down anymore.” Plus, she added, her straight friends post pictures with their boyfriends and girlfriends all the time. So why can’t she?

That’s also why she filed the lawsuit. Even if the school won’t change its stance on homosexuality, she doesn’t want them to target anyone else in the future like they’re doing to her. In fact, she’s gotten so many messages and calls of support from former students at her school who are now openly LGBTQ. She wants the “continuous cycle” of shame and hate to end.

It’s not all supportive, though. Morgan said her friends at school have mostly blocked her on social media since this controversy went public. Maybe that’s to avoid the wrath of the school’s prying eyes, but it’s not like they’ve contacted her privately either to let her know they’re still on her side. The irony is that many of them have known she’s gay for years now. It’s only when this story went viral that they decided to cut their ties. Her girlfriend Sophie, however, is right there with her. It must be hard to watch Morgan go through all this, but the two are still as close as ever.

As for her future, Morgan doesn’t know where she’ll end up at college. She probably won’t be playing basketball anywhere, but for her sake, I hope she ends up in a place where she’s accepted and not treated as some kind of outcast.

If you visit the school’s Facebook page, by the way, one of the most recent posts (from February) is a picture of Morgan and other senior athletes. It’s deeply ironic that administrators have no problem using Morgan to promote the school, but the second she expressed concern over faith-based hate while publicly announcing her relationship, they decided that needed to be prevented at all costs…

They messed with the wrong person.

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